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The Importance Of Banning The Electoral College

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A sad truth comes to light as the results of a tight race for the next president starts to roll in. The truth is that the dysfunctional system that demonstrates the whole voting process takes the future of America 's leader, the one who will set many precedents and lessons for future generations to come, into the hands of former politicians and notable political figures, who take on the careless and unnecessary role of an elector. These electors are part of a voting system called the Electoral College. The Electoral College is a group of 538 people that are elected at state conventions to officially vote for the next presidential candidate based on each state 's popular vote. This structure is old and should be banned for several reasons. …show more content…

It was supposed to be a check-and-balance system in the voting process and was not supposed to cause any further complications. However, the Electoral College turned out to be a mere but powerful formality. It was created because the Founding Fathers needed a compromise that would balance out the power between the big and small states. Back in the day, the difference in population between the large and small states was just ten to one. Even cities, such as New York City, had only 33,000 citizens residing in it. The divide between rural and urban areas were obscure. The founders of our country did not explore the possibility of cities filled with tremendous amounts of people, or gargantuan states such as California. (Cooper 2) The Electoral College is not a compromise anymore. It is a hackneyed voting system that does not fit today 's generation. Cities are bigger and more populated nowadays, which means the states that hold those big cities might have more electors, and more electors mean that if a presidential candidate wins the popular vote in that big state, then it wins over all the electors ' votes in that state, thus gaining them more votes to win the coveted presidency. This imbalance of power accentuates the dominance that bigger states have over smaller states. The Electoral College is no longer a check-and-balance system anymore. Furthermore, there are no big, world-class, cities in small states. Small states are just generally not as populated as bigger states are. The Electoral College was also made because the Fathers thought that many of the citizens in the U.S. were poorly educated and would not make the smart decision to vote for the more qualified president. However, today, people have radios, television, the Internet, phones, newspapers, and many other tools of technology. It is incredibly easy to obtain information about different political candidates and

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The Framers of the Constitution created the Electoral College as a compromise between electing the President directly by popular vote and having Congress choose the President. At the time, there were concerns about electing the President directly, such as the lack of communication and travel infrastructure to facilitate a national election and the possibility of uneducated voters being easily swayed by popular demagogues. Additionally, the Framers were concerned that smaller states would be overshadowed by larger ones in a direct popular vote. The Electoral College has several pros and cons.

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Hayes who was in the Republican party and Samuel J. Tilden who, opposite of Hayes, was in the Democratic party. The Electoral College was first developed with the constitution to serve as a compromise, because people thought Congress should elect the president while others thought the popular vote should have the decision. Each state has a minimum of three electors which is constructed of two senators and a representative. The more representatives a state has, the more electors granted. Although the popular votes do not determine the elector votes, it almost always happens where the electors vote for whom the popular votes resulted  in.

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This way many states get to see the candidate and get to hear from them. The Electoral College gives a balance between big states and small states.

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The Electoral College 1. Identify the reasoning of the framers of the Constitution for creating such an unusual system by which we choose our presidents. a. In 1787 the Electoral College was created by the framers of the Constitution. They devised a method to elect a president that would ensure that the person elected would not gain too much power and independence.

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As the mode in which electing a president needed to prevent the possibility of “cabal, intrigue, and corruption”, stated by Alexander Hamilton, and thus the Electoral College was born. Our current system follows the regulations dictated by the US Constitution and 12th amendment: each state is assigned a number of votes based off said state’s population and whomever receives the majority of the votes wins that year's election. The system was crafted in attempts to make sure bigger states did not hold an absurd amount of power over smaller states; it was crafted to serve the republic. The political and socio-economical climate is completely different than the one in which the Electoral College was created in. In fact, the original design was “supposed to work without political parties and without national campaigns”, giving more choice to the public.

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While there is still a degree of dispute over the claim, many historians agree that the idea of the Electoral College came about late in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 through the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters. The members and of the Committee, along with the majority of the Founding Fathers, supported the idea of an Electoral College because they wanted residents in states with smaller populations to have an effect on the presidential election. Furthermore, the Founding Fathers supported the Electoral College because it helped to balance the vote of the general American people with the vote of the elite and knowledgeable electors. Moreover, the Electoral College provides insulation for the presidential election against political manipulation. In Federalist No. 68, Alexander Hamilton defended the idea of an Electoral College because he felt that it helped to protect the state’s power in presidential elections.

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The Electoral college was a successful method of election as it eliminated corruption from the process. In The Federalist 68 Alexander Hamilton points out, “They have not made the appointment of President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes” (The Federalist 68). The electors have no preconceived notions about the president, and will not allow their votes to be bought out. They are unbiased which allows for a fair and uncorrupt election.

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The United States is a government republic, with chose authorities at the elected (national), state and neighborhood levels. On a national level, the head of express, the President, is chosen in a roundabout way by the general population of each state, through an Electoral College. Today, the balloters essentially dependably vote with the well-known vote of their state. All individuals from the government council, the Congress, are straightforwardly chosen by the general population of each state. There are many chosen workplaces at the state level, each state having no less than an elective Governor and council.

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They may argue that it gives less populated areas a voice, leading to a unified country (Kimberling). William C. Kimberling notes, “Proponents argue that the Electoral College system contributes to the cohesiveness of the country by requiring a distribution of popular support to be elected president, without such a mechanism, they point out, president would be selected either through the domination of one populous region over the others or through the domination of large metropolitan areas over the rural ones.” When stated this way, one can see the benefits of the Electoral College. On the contrary, some believe it allows rural populations to have the upperhand (Kimberling). This is due to the fact that electoral votes are not determined by population size, but by the number of House and Senate members.

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Several years after the United States came to be, the Constitutional Convention met to determine how the new nation should govern itself. The delegates saw that it was crucial to have a president and vice president, but the delegates did not want these offices to reflect how the colonies were treated under the British rule. The delegates believed that the president’s power should be limited, and that he should be chosen through the system known as the Electoral College. The Electoral College is a body of people who represent the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the electing of the president and vice president. Many citizens feel that the Electoral College goes against our nation’s principle of representative democracy, while others

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Electoral college has been with us since the birth of the constitution, and to this day we are still using this type of system to this day. The Electoral College is a system that the United States uses to elect our upcoming presidents and vice presidents. Each state has electors equal to their senate member and house of representatives, however who ever gets the highest popular vote in the state gets the electoral vote. The issue is the Electoral College do not give votes to the people, but to the states. Which has some unfair consequences.

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The first article's main point is that the United States of America should not get rid of the electoral college, but do away with the popular vote instead. The popular vote does not pick the president, it merely choosing which party of electors will be able to cast their votes towards their candidate. The article also said that instead of the electors for each state be the state's senators and representatives, they should be people of that state, decided by a lottery held before the election day. The second article said that if the country gets rid of the electoral college, then it would be as though the country is handing the election to the states that have the highest populations (i.e. California and Texas).

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Rush Limbaugh once said, “The primary purpose of the Electoral College is to maintain the power of the states and to support the idea that the election is decided by the states. It’s not decided by the general population, and it never was.” Rush Limbaugh is describing exactly why the Electoral College was created- so that power could be divided amongst the states without one person holding more power than another. Although some people think that a national popular vote would be a better way to have elections, it is actually the exact opposite. Getting rid of the Electoral College would mean that not only would the bigger, more populated, cities hold all of the power, you are just one vote that is going up against thousands of others.

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In 1787, years after the founding of the United States, the Constitutional Convention met to decide how the new nation would govern itself. The delegates understood that the need for a leader was necessary but still bitterly remembered how Britain abused of its power. The delegates agreed that the President and Vice President should be chosen informally and not based on the direct popular vote, thus gave birth to the Electoral College. The Electoral College is defined as “a body of people representing the states of the US, who formally cast votes for the election of the president and vice president.” Since 1787 the Electoral College has been the system for voting in the United States, but with our nation ever more changing and growing it

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The Electoral College is the process to which the United States elects the President, and the Vice President. The founders of the Constitution came up with this process. This was done to give additional power to the small states, and it was done to satisfy them. It works by the citizens of the United States electing representatives called electors. Each state is given the same amount of electors, as they are members of congress.

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